storing items

[silberschatzimsee]

Sadly i yet cant provide knowledge about weaponry but i will share my know-how on storeing your pieces best.

The problem: Since about an year or so i am tracing many weapon auctions. Bone inlaid guns, swords, knives, shaffrons etc. Sadly i often come across cracked wood, biscuit ivory, brittle leather and similar issues preventing me to buy since i always aim for the "perfect" piece and i am rather picky collector. Ok i admit i am very picky one
Its somehow an ambivalent approach. I know old pieces have dents, nicks, marks and other flaws but how much patina is allowed? To give an overdrawn example. Is a perfectly carved gun stock from 'the master of the tierkopfranke' cracked into two still really desirable? Or better skip that piece.....???
But you also cant blame in most of the cases the previous owners since it was just not an issue in earlier days to preserve to excessively. Furthermore the knowledge wasnt simply there.

So what to do now???
My approach to this issue is called "passive humidity stabilization". If here are any cigar aficionados around they will know the system. Its similar to a humidor. But conditioned to 50% and not 70% humidity. 50% humidity prevents to have fungus on organic material spreading and the stabilizing the humidity prevents cracks from upcoming tension due to expand and shrinking materials. It also prevents paper falling to dust and leather crumbling apart.

The whole package fresh out of the vault.

SEE PICTURE 1 BELOW

I use a airtight "tupperwarebox". Make sure its BPA free and has the food safe sign. Museums use special kind of foils which are even more airtight. But since i regularly visit my items anyway, my focus was more on stability. Please note if you are thinking now to invest in a similar system, any ivory item needs to be in a clear coloured box. Without light, ivory tends to get yellowish-biscuit coloured which is less desirable.

SEE PICTURE 2 BELOW

view from bottom

SEE PICTURE 3 BELOW

How it looks inside. (the fence thing inside came with the box and was not bought intentionally. However it proofed to be very practical to separate the pearls from the item.)

SEE PICTURE 4 BELOW

pearls closeup:

SEE PICTURE 5 BELOW

2 different airbubble foils for warehousing depending on which size of the item. i always pack my boxes additonally with them in case of an earthquake, a attacking godzilla or whatever

SEE PICTURE 6 BELOW

conclusion

the good:
+preservation of objects, helping to keep status quo
+low tech
+rather cheap compared to an hourly wage of an conservator ^^
+easily adaptable for individual needs

the bad:
-It does not counteract varying temperatures. (const. 20° is the optimum)
-At the moment state, my objects cant really be displayed properly. (I am still designing my own glas display cases)

total cost without the hygrometer: ~40 euro for everything.

I hope i gave you some ideas and its not stale news. If you have any feedback or want to show your preserving and warehousing methods feel free to post them here.

kind regards
Andi